Most motor vehicles are originally equipped with spare tire carriers or, alternately, such carriers can be added later. In order to keep cargo and passenger carrying capability as large as possible and to avoid obstruction of such, various spare tire carriers have been mounted on the outer sides of the body or in various underbody locations. The latter locations naturally result in the least objectionable arrangement from the point of view of utilization of cargo and passenger space, of access to doors, hatches, gates, and the like, and also for aesthetic reasons, as the tire in its carrier is essentially hidden from superficial view. Thus a variety of spare tire carriers have been mounted under vehicle bodies in spite of certain drawbacks, such as for instance, difficult accessibility and tire removal capability particularly when, as is usual, the carrier and tire are caked up with road dirt and when a tire has to be changed at night and in adverse weather.
It seems that industry's philosophy in regard to the construction of prior art carriers has been based on the idea that the purchaser and user of a vehicle is disinterested in the spare tire carrier type and location, as long as it does not obstruct cargo and passenger space, and as long as styling of the vehicle is not adversely affected. A tire change on the road is not too often needed nowadays and, in fact, only on such occasions are the inconveniences and disadvantages of conventional original equipment driven home--but then rather painfully. The actual utility of tire carriers seems to have been largely neglected by industry. Consequently, most original equipment tire carriers reflect this attitude, as a result of which commercially available tire carriers of the underbody type are highly inconvenient to use. Several tire carriers are known in the art with much improved utility, but these appear to be also of increased complexity and cost and are generally not commercially available. Needless to say, original motor vehicle equipment rarely, if ever, includes the latter type of carriers, presumably for reaons of their higher cost and complexity.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,904,093 to Hanela and 4,278,191 to Mecham, for example, disclose underbody-mounted spare tire carriers which appear to offer improved utility in that they have the capability to swing, tilt, or otherwise move out from under the vehicle body from their normal tire and carrier storage location, in order to facilitate convenient accessibility of tire removal and replacement. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,187,914 to Peras and 3,330,431 to Knecht teach improvements to tire carriers providing similar capabilities.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,072,258 to Cruson and 4,573,855 to Braswell show tire carriers with convenient accessibility based on parallelogram suspension arrangements.
The above teachings offer desirable benefits, but the disclosed devices suffer from a relatively high complexity of mechanism and structure and thusly also from comparatively high cost.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide an improved spare tire carrier readily mounted in an underslung underbody location, but which is relatively simple in construction and low in manufacturing and installation cost. Nevertheless, the carrier of the invention provides for convenient access for removal and replacement of tires by being simply movable between a tire storage position and an easy-access position, while ensuring secure holding of a spare tire when in storage position.